Dartmouth Royal Regatta from onboard Blues Xtra


In our second report, Donald Wilks of Banks Sails gives his view of the Dartmouth Regatta from the deck of Blues Xtra.

For Dartmouth, I jumped ship and joined local Peter Johnson on his well-kept X-302. Having struggled with his old sails, Peter opted for a new Kevlar Mainsail and All Pupose No.1 Kevlar Genoa from Banks. His first race with the sails brought him a first in class in the Round the Island Race as well as the Spring and Summer RDYC evening series. The Regatta was to be his pinnacle.

It was not looking good at the beginning, though, when the race committee put us in the bottom of IRC 2 rather than the top of IRC 3. This was going to be tough as we would be against a total of 24 other boats, including the X-332s of Celavie and Exabyte (the current national champion) and the GK33s, Sigma 38s and Sigma 36s.

The first race was from the heavy-weather course and we resigned ourselves to being rolled at the start and coming at the back after being overtaken by all the other large boats. However, not all our fleet were prepared to be aggressive at the start and we took most by surprise and managed to find clear air for the reach to the Skerries. This helped our case and by working hard at all points of sail, we came in sixth of 25 for the first race.

For the second race the wind was even stronger and the course the same, but there was not much chance to find clear air on the crowded line. But again, by keeping our eyes open and being aggressive about positioning our boat, we kept up with much larger boats. As the wind built and showers came through, we brought ourselves within striking distance of the leader on the water by tacking early after the squall came through. This gave us a wonderful lift and we were fourth to the penultimate mark! The drag race to the finish saw the wind rise to over 30 knots, so a conservative finish meant we were first by over five minutes!

The third race was going to be tricky. The X-302 is a fairly heavy boat for its size and any wind less than 10 knots is not good. After an average start and first beat, we were well down the fleet at the windward mark, but good tactics on the short downwind leg brought us past eight boats and left us with some clear air to work the long beat. After a tricky but productive beat we were just over a minute behind the leading boat in our class on corrected time. More aggression and working the windshifts downwind took us past another few boats. Unfortunately the last two legs were reaches and although we managed to hold a spinnaker on the last leg, we could not catch the leader who won on corrected time with us in third.

The last day, and while Classes 1 and 3 were tied up, we were lying second and there were five other boats that could still win. A nice windward - leeward with 16-18 knots and all we had to do was have a clean start and stay in touch. By the end of the first round and with some shrewd tactical beating, we were fifth on the water and ahead on corrected time.

Consolidation was the name of the game, and by keeping track of the opposition and the wind shifts we were able to sail the final part of the race cleanly to win on corrected time. Once the numbers had been worked out, Blues Xtra came away with Best Overall points in IRC, Class Winners, Best Team and Best RDYC Member in Regatta. A very satisfied Mr Johnson was given a standing ovation by his fellow competitors at the Club Dinner that evening.

Read Roger Cerrato's report from onboard Fandango

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